Wildfire

Kelowna wildfire 2023

It is a sad story.

They clearcut the forests that cool the planet. This summer, in drought, wildfires raged everywhere, burning what was left. Only mature trees store carbon. This means the world will get hotter, burn longer. 

Our leaders are addicted to capitalism. No one dares talk about lowering emissions now, and 2035 and 2050 are too far away.

They are still logging. The fires are still burning. We are running out of water.

Mother Earth is struggling. Yet she still graces us with sunrises, sunsets, puppies, beauty enough to break our hearts, knowing how badly we have treated her.

She says, “To be pretty for you I have dropped two seeds of turnsole in the dark of both eyes.” 

So pretty! Like weary sunflowers, turning our faces to the sky, we send out a plea to Whoever Is Listening:

Please send help.

 

for Sanaa at dVerse:  a story in 144 words including the italicized line.

Italicized line is from the poem “Garden.” by Isabel Duarte Gray.

SACRED GLIMMERS

 

The weather's fine, unless you live

where wildfires burn: the flames chasing

frantic humans across the land, the animals

living and dying a terror they can never understand.
It's fine unless you live where storms and floods
are washing you away
from the place you dreamed
you would forever stay.

It got too hot for the crops this year

that shrivelled in the field; not enough grain

for humans, hay for horses, a poor yield.

Rivers and lakes are drying up
from too much heat.
We turn our eyes away;
we keep on keeping on,
on trepidatious feet.

We are still moving forward,
because that is what we do,
adjusting to rapid change,
so scary and so new.

Between the news reports,

that pierce our hearts and make us cry

lie the moments of our lives:

the sweet, slow waking, on a West Coast

September morning, to blue sky,

the waves calling me forth

with their forever siren song.

The tiniest wildflowers

poking from rocky cliffs are whispering:

sometimes you have to just hold on.

There is an apple orchard in my heart,

incongruously, as I live beside the sea.

My childhood resides there, underneath

the blossoms, full of dreams

that did not include all I have come to see,

or how this long, surprising journey

has fashioned me.

It is the sacred glimmers that draw me forth:

sunrises, sunsets, and the shimmering sea,

forests of ancient cedar, dusk and dawn,

the way each early morning smiles "trek on!"

These sacred glimmers are still shining here

as we hobnob our hectic way along,

still flying, driving, consuming desperately,

humming our frantic, existential song,

 an earthly species that does not understand

that we belong.

I am nearing the end of the journey

at the end of the road,

with gratitude for every incandescent

glimmer life bestowed.

I would like my casket woven of seagrass

so that I can all the more quickly pass

into the welcoming, mothering,

nurturing earth, the better to have

a swift transition,

and a swift rebirth.

For my prompt on Wednesday at  What's Going On?  - How's the weather? 

It has been a mixed bag this past summer, where wildfires raged all across Canada and the entire North West Territories. Evacuating towns from the remote north was a logistical nightmare. The graphs show wildfire levels are off the charts. The rainforest I live in has been in drought since February; it has never been so dry. We received 75% less rain than normal this year.

On August 21, California, already fighting a wildfire, was slammed with a hurricane which caused massive flooding, landslides and crumbling roads. AND there was an earthquake the same day. Hurricanes everywhere wreaking havoc, and 2035 and 2050 are far too far away as targets for lowering emissions.

Mother Earth is struggling, and the weather is how she makes it known. May humankind hear her desperate cries. As for me, I don't think I want a re-birth into a burning world. I just needed that line to end the poem. LOL.

TOFINO 9 A.M.

 

Christine Lowther photo

Here I am, 

sitting at my desk

in front of the window

on a rainy Tuesday, so grateful

the rain has finally come.

Everything green is thirsting,

leaves turning their faces up 

to catch every drop, flowers

drooping, waterlogged; soon,

they will drop all their petals

as summer drifts away.

I see the slugs are back:

trying to make a home in the lily fronds.

I move them off and bring the plants

into the lobby, hoping they will last.

The wind chimes out my bedroom window

sound like church bells, deep and resonant,

the breeze moving them gently to and fro.

In spite of the fact that the earth is spinning

wildly on its axis these days, and all manner

of mayhem is occurring all over the globe,
that on my street, they are felling trees,
habitat for owls, woodpeckers and Stellar jays,
in spite of the fact
heavy equipment is biting hungry chunks
out of the neighbourhood,
and I am hearing the whine of chainsaws,
the thump of trees hitting the earth,
all day long
- in the season of wildfire and drought,
when we have never needed trees more - 

I have to report 

(things having gotten so dire)
that I have learned to appreciate
an ordinary day when no crisis
is occurring: grateful for each breath
of rain-freshened air.
We have come to the time of
"at least": (there is no flood, storm, fire
or earthquake here, we still have homes,
and, thankfully, don't know what's coming).
We accept with pleasure
this rain-soaked, autumn-kissed day,
this grey sky we have 
waited for all summer.

Yesterday was blue.
Today there is 
a misty seascape
in my heart.

Day One of Wild Writing: the italicized lines are taken from Christopher Wiseman's poem "Calgary 2 A.M."

Shared with Desperate Poets' open link.

Blue

 

The sea is blue today.
Oh, I remember Blue,
those years of suffering through
what can diplomatically
be described as ill-advised
and dangerous liaisons,
from which I emerged 
into the journey of the self.

What a pilgrimage it has been,
from suffering to the last quarter-century
of solitude and peace,
days rolling past
like the eternal waves:
beauty, benevolence and bliss
not even memory can alter.
I flick flashbacks away
like mosquitoes  of no consequence,
mere stumbling blocks
encountered early
on the path.

No more weird rendezvous,

since the last ridiculous farce

with a wannabe Sir Lancelot,

tilting his sword at all

the pretty ladies, then

I was done.

"We are the daughters

of the witches you did not burn,"

said someone somewhere,

and I resonate. Deep roots

in Mother Earth, eyes on blue sky,

sunny days and some kind and gentle folk

all healed me, made me whole.

Dangerous encounters

made later solitude so sweet:

peaceful days, restful nights,

no more suffering

at the hands of desperados

who passed through my life

like wrecking balls, then,

mercifully, were gone.

Well. I tap the keys and never know what will emerge. This is a sorry tale, from which I emerged with gratitude for the years that followed. My best life companion: a hilarious big black wolf, who showed me how love was supposed to be done.

for Desperate Poets: Illicit Encounters. 

Travelling

 

"The page is a road that glows
in the setting light."
Joy Sullivan

Even sitting still, we're travelling:

even in these small cozy rooms, the horizon

draws me ever forward. My dreams,

though I feel as settled as a woodchuck

in this place, are all of searching

for a new home. I avert my eyes

from the message in this dream:

this may be the last home I live in,

so will the address of the next

be other-worldly?

Perhaps each poem
is a small journey

into the unknown.

Where do these words come from,
as I tap the keys?

Always, dreaming,
there is the ocean,

and an old house perched

on a hill. Sometimes I return

to the same house, on the same promontory,

and recognize it with delight

as the place I have always

been yearning for.

Once, I dreamed I was moving in
with my mother, who had been dead
for a year. Sometimes, I am reunited
with a lover, only this time, nobody leaves
and there is joy.
Sometimes a weary black wolf
with white whiskers
let's me know
he is still waiting.

Even sitting still, we're travelling.

In dreams, sometimes,
perhaps we're

finally coming home.

Sharing this with Desperate Poets open link

On Unreliable Narrators in the Blogosphere

 

I have always been

desperately different;

this is not news. In my youth,
it caused me angst and consternation.

In old age,

it becomes a source of satisfaction:

I yam what I yam.

I once was home support

for a sweet little lady with dementia,

whose favourite phrase was

"Thank you, God, for giving me

a brain". She kept losing things,

like keys, and blaming other people,
like the much younger dog walker,

but with loving asides, like "the man

is in another world, the poor bugger,

I won't ask anything of him again,"

and "Do you think he's getting copies made?

Do you think he has designs on me?

Because I love the man for his kindness,

but I have no thought of anything with him,

his wife can rest easy."
Her life ended sadly,
in her cluttered little house,
her anxious great dane
by her side.

Maybe we are all, in the end,

unreliable narrators, with our shiny poems

presenting our most wishful selves,

thousands of poems we hope

will live on after we're gone,

that most likely will end up

in a landfill. Or, in my case,

washed out to sea in a tsunami.

(All that work! to produce so many books

that no one wants to keep.)

Maybe we are not as inadequate

as we secretly feel. Maybe we are not

as composed as the exteriors we present

to the world. Possibly we are all,

in the end, unreliable narrators,

just doing the best we can.

Well. I am not sure if this is what Shay is looking for at Desperate Poets' Desperately Different prompt. I tend to just start typing and see where it takes me. This is what happened. 

What's Going On?

 

I turn on the news

and it's really bad,

so much suffering

it makes me sad

but hey hey

hope's the only answer

There's still so much beauty,

all I've got to say ~

so much to be grateful for

every day

so hey hey

I just keep believing

The grass is dry and yellow,

as the wildfires burn,

and what will we do

when it comes our turn?

praying hey hey

bless the beasts and the children

So I walk in the forest,

 I pray at the shore,

and Mother Earth's beauty

I could not love more

so hey hey

love's the only answer
~ for what's going on,
it takes us all to answer

for Susan's prompt at our new site:  What's Going On?  

I wrote to the beat of the prompt song. And I am trying to hold onto hope, even though humanity is heading in the wrong direction at breakneck speed. My poems (and optimism) have changed so much since 2016. But we can't give up. Gotta keep believing.

Protect What You Love